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A walk down the city streets during the after-work hours these days, would show you a very different life of the hardworking labour class. Low cost smartphones and the latest revolution that was brought in by Jio has given all of them an access into a whole new world of entertainment and information that is creating aspiration in the section of our society that was never pulled in the economy. Though as single units, they might not look like a big change, but even a proportion of the 80 million migrant population can collectively change the face of consumption patterns in the country. Smart phones single-handedly have led to a revolution around us; the target groups are evolving, touch points for brands are changing, shopping pattern are way different, accessibility and experience are the new parameters for quality, but the world of advertising has failed to catch up with the pace of innovation.

As any new pathbreaking technological evolution is accepted by people, the brand powerhouses start adapting themselves, they are followed by the marketing firms who tweak their strategy as per the brand’s need and then the advertising companies move towards the change only when pushed. Ad-agencies are not pre-empting the changes and adapting themselves but are being the laggards, and this gap could be as much as 2 years! In an era when technology is changing with the blink of eyes, 2 years is enough of a time to make you irrelevant and you may be consumed by what is being termed as ‘Digital Darwinism’.

Look at what’s happening in the Industry, many brands are losing their equity and connect with customers and are increasingly being commodititized. For instance, let’s consider the Airline industry, the companies have lost their brand value and the entire business has become a price war zone. People choose the cheapest flight and are not willing to pay any premium for a brand. One of the reasons could be that companies have failed to tell their stories to their consumers. Once, the television was an engaging medium, people had time to spare and TV commercials served as effective medium for brand communication. But now, the world has shrunk into the 5.5” mobile screen and brand communicators have not been able to tap that medium effectively yet. Although social media campaigning and digital marketing are a ‘talk of the town’ these days, but the innovators are moving far ahead as we are trying to figure out what hashtags and keywords make users click. The Siris and Cortanas are slowly becoming an integral part of our daily lives, our gadgets are becoming more intuitive and intelligent, chatbots are taking over communication, in such times shouldn’t advertising be moving on along the same pace? How do we integrate a brand with the modern-day J.A.R.V.I.S and F.R.I.D.A.Y, and gain the customer’s mindshare?

Seamless connectivity, accessibility and quick service are no longer a tool for customer satisfaction and retention, they now are hygiene factors; if you’re not quite there, you’re off the evoked set, may be, forever. The factors like quality, better features, design innovation, though are still relevant, but they are not the only ones that would differentiate you, there are so many others offering the same. To find a place in the customer’s top of the mind recall we need the brand communication to be an experience that would keep the customers at ease and weave into their lifestyle perfectly; the message needs to be unified at various brand touch points, from the customer support service to the UI/UX experience.

A big revolution that awaits us in the very near future is Internet of Things, or IOT. We’re talking of a world where not just our phones and tablets but even cars, refrigerators, air conditioners would all be intelligent enough to know just what we need. These devices become store houses of data, giving novel insights into customer’s buying pattern, preferences, lifestyle and choice drivers: data that was previously unobtainable. The marketers will have several opportunities to deliver more relevant communication to the consumers and it might not be in any ad-format we know as of now. We’re heading towards an unpredictable era. Is the advertising industry ready for such a change, from being just a communicator to being an integral part of the service design and orchestrating a brand campaign?

We need to gear up and participate in this evolution, as the strategy guru Peter Drucker put it, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

First published in Business Standard on the 2nd Jan 2017

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The above statement isn’t a mere vision statement that companies put on their walls but a mark of authority that is etched into brands like Tata and Aditya Birla Group and forms the core of each of their endeavors. Both these groups have been a beacon of trust for years and have set standards for everyone else to follow. They are the fulcrum and the inspiration on which New India has been built. Today we’re going to take a look at one dimension of the brands to try and decode why they are what they are.

Like all other practices, Tata Group’s communication also puts ‘people’ at the heart of it. Long time back when Tata came out with the corporate campaign for Tata Steel, it connected with people on a socially relevant basis without taking away the relevance of its brand. Tata Chemicals’ ‘Desh Ka Namak’ campaign for Tata Salt was based on bringing back values like honesty that have been long forgotten in our country. Over the last two decades, Tata Salt has lived up to its claim of being ‘Desh Ka Namak whether its change in behavior or business numbers’. According to Nielsen Retail Audit, March 2011, each month more than 50,000 metric tonnes of Tata Salt is sold through over 12 lakh retail outlets reaching 50 million households across the country.

Perhaps one of the most defining campaigns of the last decade was Tata Tea’s- Jaago Re. Jaago Re was a cause based initiative taken by Tata Tea in 2008 with other NGOs and non-profit organizations to create awareness on certain issues plaguing the country around elections. The aim was to awaken the nation to the fact that they tend to hold the government accountable to various mishaps and encouraged them to participate in the functioning of the country’s politics by voting. The campaign received numerous accolades and was an extremely successful campaign. Taking the good work of Tata Tea forward, Tata Capital positioned itself on the platform of ‘Doing Right’ and putting people above oneself. The brand and its communication propagated the virtue of selflessness- projecting right values, putting people first and preaching what is right. Coming to jewelry, the recent Tanishq campaign from Tata celebrates the second marriage of a woman which has always been frowned upon by our society. It is a brave and progressive attempt by Tata which has always been the agent of change in this country and showing the way to others.

Tata’s commitment to the nation and the society for all these years without losing focus of its business has led to it being one of the most responsible, credible and transparent brands in the world. This is a message to other businesses and brands who are not consumer facing to take a leaf out of Tata’s book and make a social connect along with the business connect. There’s something in the DNA of Tata to build brands which have social commitment and respect for the same values. Apart from this, championing acts like Tata Nano to empower the middle class is really magnanimous and commendable.

Another brand which has set an example for others to follow is the Aditya Birla Group. Whether it’s their corporate campaign which in spite of its larger than life feel, yet retains a strong connect with the masses or its Birla Sun Life Yuvraj Singh campaign which aimed to inspire mass India with the personal triumphs, trials and tribulations of Yuvraj, who like a Phoenix, never accepts defeat. The biggest triumph for the group came in the form of Idea Cellular. Idea has always come up with campaigns which have been for a greater cause.

In 2007, the brand came up with a campaign ‘What an Idea Sirjee’ taking up the caste issue plaguing the society. This series included campaigns like ‘Use Mobile, Save Paper’, ‘Walk When You Talk’, ‘Education for All’, ‘Democracy’ et al. Idea took up several causes plaguing the society and provided brilliant solutions to it without the brand losing relevance.

The world is changing very fast. And in this changing world unfortunately, values are taking a backseat. Fortunately, for us there are brands like Tata and Aditya Birla Group which stand tall and firm like a lighthouse showing us light amidst a sea of doubts while guiding us towards the right port.

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One of the perks of being in advertising is to be privy to some of the most intimate moments of the history; in retrospective I recollect one, as Sachin is hanging his boots in few days I owe it to myself to narrate this amazing event to the world. It was in 2002, while working on a world cup cricket campaign for LG electronics; I was shooting 36-television commercials at a breakneck speed for the world cup in South Africa. LG tied-up with ICC as the primary sponsor and was allowed by ICC to use all participating 14 team captains for publicity hence the campaign with 14 captains ( “Cricket first” was the campaign theme), we got the time for shoot allotted by ICC in Colombo Sri Lanka whist the ICC champions trophy being played in that country. We had around 6 days to shoot all 14 captains, were allowed a couple of hours a day with out upsetting the team schedules.

We parked ourselves at the Hilton Colombo and marked several locations in the hotel for shooting different commercials to save time, one such location was the penthouse suite; One of the days when we were set to shoot the combinations with Nasser Hussain, Waqar Younis, Shaun Pollack, Stephen Fleming and Carl Hooper, while Nasser Hussain was getting ready for his shot, I was watching India playing Zimbabwe in one of the bedrooms sitting in center of the bed, soon I was joined by the legendary bowling captains, Waqar, Pollack, Flaming and Hooper.

Soon the bowlers were glued to the TV watching the Indian “God” batting, I still remember the mesmerizing site of four bowlers watching master batsman Sachin bat, like little kids seeing an instructor play. I was pinching myself for what I was witnessing and then all hell broke loose as Sachin gets out cheaply to Heath Streak or Henry Olongo, In unison you see all four raising hands in air and say “Shit” with utmost disgust and argue amongst themselves about, how unfair the life is; while Pollack says “ we all are always asked to bowl straight and we follow that religiously and look at this bloke bowling wide outside the off stump and the master decides to ignore all his discipline and reaches the ball to give a catching practice to the second slip.” “Why does this bowler gets “Masters” wicket so easily? And why do we have to slog for days to get him?” adds Waqar.

I can never forget how lucky I was to see the greatest bowlers of all time discussing about Sachin’s batting and putting the kind of importance to his wicket in their life is simply amazing, bowlers around the world practice relentlessly for months and years to get him out is a testimony to his greatness and being a witness to such an event makes my 34 years of advertising career worth the while.

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Advertising has become more complex today then ever before, there was a time when all channels of communications were controlled by advertising agencies but today advertising has gone through a significant change today we have more then two dozen specialist agencies specialized from creative planning to digital executions. Apart from loads of channels to communicate to the consumers have changed, people themselves have changed.

A recent study published in Times of India points the average age of the consumer had dropped dramatically, for instance an average car buyers age had come down from 45 to below 30. This change not only affects the target for marketing but it also changes the media planning. Hence one needs to look at the content of communication in the context of message consumption therefore it is extremely important for the communication content creators to understand the contextual targeting. The moral of this story is if the creative and media planning or digital planning agencies do not collaborate then how the hell are they going to create a relevant campaign?

In this ever-evolving complex world everything is linked to everything and not everyone can be experts in everything. Super specializations are hear to stay and the intelligence lies in learning from each other and working as a team even if the team you are supposed to work with, belongs to a competing holding company. If a creative agency can collaborate with a film production company, which also works with competing agencies can happen with out any hesitation, then why not collaborate with another competing small agency on a project in the interest of a brand?

Bigger and traditional creative agencies can learn a thing or two from modern design companies which have learned to co-create and collaborate with technology companies for starters take a look at the design winners from Cannes this year. Small and nimble agencies have realized this early enough and are raking in now. Now it’s the turn of the biggies.

We all are witnessing the results of coalition government with out any collaboration. I urge all the communications channels to come together and get to learn from each other and march ahead into the new age communication era.

After all the solo sulking days have gone, as my friend Agnello puts it “jo tera hai wo mera hai”,

Anna is a Gandhian but not a Gandhi. I respect Anna for his honesty, simplicity, his stubbornness, intent and his peaceful methods. Leaders are always born out of adversity, when India is going through her worst leadership integrity crisis, Anna took upon himself to rally people against corrupt politics and society, a simple, quite Gandhian turned into an agent of people’s conscience.

Anna’s success came because of young India taking to streets, a movement fueled by anger and helplessness of young men and women, who silently witnessed the powerful leaders and businessmen shamelessly looting their treasury.

When corruption reached parliament, when policemen started to rape and molest little girls, when army men stoop to steal wealth, when politicians blatantly amass disproportionate wealth, When educated entrepreneurs cook-up account books, when Baba’s hide rooms full of gold and silver and when temple incomes bulge more then a state’s. You know it’s only a matter of time for a catharsis and indeed Anna became the fountainhead of this revolt.

After Jaiprakash Narayan no other leader mustered as much support as Anna. Jaiprakash Narayan succeeded in changing the government because he supported a newly formed cleaner party with leaders of intent and integrity. The agenda before the nation was clear: vote out the Nazist congress party, people understood and implemented. When people empathize with issues they need an action point and Jaiprakash Narayan provided one.

Mahatma Gandhi too understands this human truth like any other successful leaders in the history, Gandhi always gave an action point, be it making salt or burning British made cloths or asking the mighty British to “Quite India”. Any mass movement should have an actionable end. Even the recent “Occupy Wall Street” had a definitive action point to just occupy Wall Street. Simple enough for people to understand and execute.

Anna should go beyond appealing to people to come onto the streets to protest. He must give an action point, if one were to say “ Vote for Lokpal or Quit parliament” and if one were to give the agenda of pushing every local MP to vote or resign, there would have been an action plan for restless young Indians to execute.

I believe Anna will become a true heir of Gandhiji, if he becomes as shrewd thinker and as clear visionary as Mahatma is.